11-Year-Old Indian Girl Dies After She Was Set on Fire For Resisting Rape

In sickening and heartbreaking news this week, an 11-year-old Indian girl who was set on fire during an attempted rape has died from her injuries.

On Saturday, Indian police arrested an 18-year-old suspect in the gruesome and harrowing case. He, and an accomplice who is still being sought by police, were named by the victim.

The girl, who has not been named, was went out of her home to go to the toilet on the evening of July 31^st. Police said that it was then the suspects allegedly attempted to rape the girl outside her home. When she resisted and threatened to reveal their identity, the 18-year-old currently in police custody poured kerosene over her and set her on fire.

That evening she was admitted to a government-run hospital in Kolkata with critical burns. Yesterday Superintendent T.K. Ghosh, an official at the hospital, said: "The minor was admitted with critical burns. Today morning, she succumbed to her injuries."

The girl’s family is now demanding a death sentence for her attacker. Various reports quote her mother as saying;  "If the government cannot give him death penalty, then it should hand him over to us so that we set him on fire in the same way as he did to our daughter."

Crimes against women in India have grabbed headlines across the world in recent months following a gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in 2012 and her subsequent death. According to the National Crimes Records Bureau, there were 244,270 crimes against women reported in 2012, including rape, kidnapping, sexual harassment, trafficking, molestation and cruelty.